Yesterday I was watching[1] an introduction to the use of Silverlight from the MIX event. Netflix hired Avenue A | Razor Fish to create a “cross-platform media player” based on Silverlight, and demonstrated the result by showing the Netflix movie player on a Windows pc first, and then on a Mac as well. In the words of Darin Brown of Avenue A | Razor Fish with Neil Hunt of Netflix acting as the surprised and impressed person:

“This is about the universal web, so what about this experience on a Mac”“Did you say on a Mac?”“I said, on a Mac!”

Although the audience seemed to like this ‘cross-platformness’, the first thing I thought was what about Linux? Would it support Linux too?

Roy Schestowitz says Silverlight is evil, as it does not support Linux, and apparently it never will. So, when Darin said:

“With Microsoft’s .NET framework, the Expression Studio as well as Visual Studio, we now have all the tools in our hands for creative and technical control.”

this may not mean what he claimed it to mean, “unprecedented collaboration between our designers and our developers”, but rather creative and technical control over the web, by excluding the free and open source Linux platform.

So, as a not so technical person I have a question for all you techies out there: if Microsoft really wanted, would they be able to create Silverlight so that it could be supported on Linux too?